York City chairman John Batchelor revealed he has launched a bid to rescue crisis-hit ITV Digital.

Mr Batchelor said he wanted to head up a bid for the company, which has yet to find a buyer.

He told the Evening Press: "For the last two weeks, I have been in consultation with a consortium of people with regard to mounting a bid for ITV Digital.

"I officially expressed an interest to the administrators in putting this bid together."

ITV Digital hit the rocks after being unable to attract sufficient viewers to its pay-per-view channels. The pay channels were switched off at 7am today, and only the free-to-air channels were still broadcasting.

The ITV Sport Channel has now been designated as free-to-watch.

Mr Batchelor, who took over York City earlier this year after the club was put up for sale, said he needed to act "very quickly", or else the company would be broken up by the administrators.

"The administrators today emphasised the need for speed, and that's what I'm bearing in mind," he added.

The price tag for ITV Digital has been placed in the hundreds of millions of pounds, but Mr Batchelor remained undaunted.

"I personally don't have that money, in fact, very few people do, but I do have the ability to bring together some of those people who might," he added.

"But I think we'd find that the assets will cost less to acquire than people think. What would cost is actually making it work."

He said the bid could eventually include people from "the worlds of football and motorsport", but said he was unable to give details.

He pledged that, if successful, the bid could only be good for York City.

"It's an opportunity to alleviate the problems associated with the Football League, and to exploit motorsport on another level," he said. "If the bid was successful, obviously the profile of York City Football Club would expand enormously, probably beyond even what we had in mind when we came in."

His next move, he said, was to speak to the Independent Television Commission (ITC), and to discuss the situation with the former owners of ITV Digital, the TV companies Carlton and Granada.

"I believe Carlton and Granada have a moral responsibility to provide financial help with the company and any future owner. Whether that is a legal responsibility is a matter for the ITC. We are now moving to get something cohesive down on paper for the administrators to see."

Updated: 08:47 Thursday, May 02, 2002